A mailbox is used to selectively receive mail and/or other items and provides a convenient and fixed location for the reception of such material. Further and typically, a conventional or “currently used” mailbox includes a selectively movable flag which is generally disposed on the side of the mailbox and which is selectively movable from a first lowered position to a second raised position when mail or other items are placed within the mailbox for pickup by the postal employee. While prior mailboxes do selectively receive mail and/or other items, they do suffer from some drawbacks.
By way of example and without limitation, the selectively and movably disposed flag prevents these conventional mailboxes from being operatively placed in a narrow space or to be closely (e.g., abuttingly) and operatively “stacked together” (e.g., along a horizontal axis parallel to the ground along which these mailboxes respectively reside), thereby preventing space from being efficiently used and conserved and limiting the number of such mailboxes which may be used within a certain area or space. Oftentimes, the flags are removed in order to allow the mailboxes to be efficiently “stacked” or positioned, thereby creating an overall unaesthetically pleasing appearance and causing structural damage to these mailboxes, while disallowing their full functionality.
Further, oftentimes the owner or user of a mailbox must travel a relatively long distance, often in undesirable weather conditions, to determine whether mail has been picked up by the postal employee or is actually placed within the mailbox (e.g., the user does not see mail being deposited and/or is unaware of the exact mail delivery time). Hence, often a user or owner of a mailbox must traverse to the mailbox on several separate occasions before obtaining the mail or other items which are deposited within the mailbox (i.e., since the user does not typically know beforehand whether the mailbox actually contains items), thereby increasing the overall inefficiency of the mail delivery process and increasing the inconvenience of the process for the recipient of the mailed items.
Further, many of the conventional mailboxes are not adapted to be readily locked, thereby allowing the deposited and mailed items to be easily obtained by a thief and increasing the likelihood that the identity of the person to whom the unlawfully obtained mail was sent will be misused by the thief. Moreover, the mailboxes which are selectively locked are not readily modifiable or designed to be readily adapted to be used only in an “unlock” configuration, thereby limiting their usefulness only to group of owners and users seeking a locking type mailbox.
Yet further, the conventional mailboxes typically only allow the deposited material to be accessed through a single entry door or member, thereby restricting the use of the mailbox to a single type of placement configuration (e.g., to a placement configuration in which the single entry door is readily accessible to the user and/or owner). Thus, based upon the foregoing, the conventional mailboxes are not readily and selectively configurable or adaptable to address a wide range of consumer (e.g. user) and mounting needs and requirements.
The present invention overcomes these and other drawbacks and disadvantages of conventional mailboxes in a new and useful manner which is more fully delineated below.